An Integrative Approach to Relational Psychoanalysis

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent research in cognitive neuroscience, as well as in therapeutic approaches such as Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, offer ways of empowering psychoanalytic therapy within the framework of contemporary psychoanalysis’s basic principles. A clinical vignette illustrating an effective application of psychotherapy integration is presented. In order to benefit from importing these outside insights and methods, some analysts will need to overcome singlemindedness and relax elitist notions of the superiority of their staunch approach. As the hegemony of psychoanalysis continues to decline, an integrative strategy of this sort can vitalize psychoanalysis and ensure its legacy while also helping nonanalytic therapists realize the ways their approaches intersect with and can benefit from ours.